May 2007 posts

My eight-year-old son had a significant phone call today. From a girl. A real, live, honest-to-goodness, second-grade girl.

I answered the phone and heard a little giggle. "Is Stephen there?"

I called for him down the hallway; as he approached, I instantly flashed-back to taunting my brother by making smoochy noises and whispering, "it's a girrrrrl!" But I remembered, thankfully, that now I'm the mom, and I handed him the phone gently, with nary a single smooch.

"Hey," he said into the phone. AS IF HE HAD BEEN EXPECTING THIS CALL. And then he sauntered down the hall toward his room for...for...what, privacy?

I stood there at the top of the stairs, frozen in a moment of indecision. I could swear I heard the Jeopardy theme song tick-tocking over my shoulder. Part of me wanted to dash downstairs and listen on the other extension. Another part of me thought that it would be more subtle just to stand outside his door and listen.

And yet another part of showed up and gave the first two parts of me a firm kick in the pants, reminding my nosy self that there's nothing wrong with a little privacy.

I set about my business distractedly, until Stephen emerged from his room a few minutes later. He came to the kitchen to hang up the phone. "So," I said just as disinterestedly as I could. "What did she want?"

Clearly he was trying to act coolly disinterested as well. "Eh, nothing. She was just bored." And he trotted back to his room, his chest a little puffier, The Kind Of Boy That Girls Call Sometimes For No Reason.

I have seen this day coming since he first looked up at me with those deep brown eyes and long eyelashes. He's going to break many hearts, and the first one may very well be mine.

I'm too confused to think of a clever opening paragraph, so let's just jump right in, shall we? BIG SPOILER WARNING if you haven't already seen tonight's episode.

First of all, Jacob. Who IS he, exactly? When I was watching the episode, I couldn't see anyone in the chair, but a quick glance at the message boards led me to this screen shot.

Here's what I'm thinking: I had the sense that Ben held Jacob in some sort of captivity. No one else can access Jacob, and was that gunpowder sprinkled around his cabin (remember the powder Locke stopped to sniff?). Then there was Jacob's obvious plea of "help me". Something fishy is afoot.

Remember a couple of seasons ago when the book Bad Twin came out, and there was all that hype about it holding some answers to the Lost mysteries? (Incidentally, I read it, and it was decently interesting but not earth-shattering). To expound on the "twin" theory (which has been beaten to death at the message boards), remember that in the Bible, Jacob and Esau were twins. Jacob was the loved one, Esau was not. The message boards are humming tonight with the notion that Jacob and John are twin brothers, or maybe Jacob and Ben. Or Sawyer and Locke. Oh, here comes that headache again...

As for Locke, I will EAT MY SHOE if he's actually dead. There's no way. He's much too central a character (though the TV Guide I read in the grocery line this morning did promise at least five major deaths coming soon). Anyway, there's that whole self-healing thing John can do, so I'm quite sure we'll be seeing Mr. Locke again soon.

Has anyone else noticed the common theme of bad fathers? There's John's, Ben's, Kate's, Sun's, Jack's (and Claire's!), and even Walt and Michael had that complicated father/son thing going on. Who am I leaving out? Any guesses as to the significance here?

I have to admit, as much as I loved this episode, I'm even more confused than usual. I'm having trouble even articulating what I know and what I don't know. Please, jump in with your thoughts...

(And if you're blogging about Lost at your place, leave your link below.)

About five years ago, I ditched my film camera for an upgrade to digital. I was enamoured with this new technology, and I click-click-clicked away with happy little fingers, downloading hundreds of pictures into every nook and cranny of my computer.

After a few months of this, I sat down to place my first big digital picture order. And I realized I had not the foggiest idea where any of my digital photo files were. And when I finally did locate most of them, I couldn't recall--had this one already been printed out? Did I already download that one to the photo site?

This little photographic crisis taught me that I needed a system for keeping up with all these digital shots. Over the years, I've found a plan that works pretty well for me.

First, in the My Photos folder under My Documents (I know I'm talking Microsoft, so you Mac-lovers try to hold your disdain), I created a folder called NYD (Not Yet Developed). Anytime I download pictures off my camera, I make sure they're going straight to that folder, and nowhere else. Then I immediately delete them off the camera.

I keep photos sitting in my NYD folder until I have enough saved up for a print order. I try to do this every couple of months to avoid ridiculously expensive orders. I upload to the print site directly from the NYD folder. Then--this is the important part--I move photos out of the NYD folder to their permanent home. In my case, this is a set of folders organized by year and season (Spring 2005, Summer 2003, etc.) If I don't immediately move them, I find that I tend to forget they've been developed and I re-order them on accident.

It's a simple little system (and you've probably all been doing this for ages and you're thinking "System? She calls that a system? " but humor me, okay?) It has saved me much time and money having a plan in place.

By the way, my favorite photo printing site is Shutterfly. If you've found one that you love, please share it in the comments section!

Have a clever idea you'd like to share? Blog about it at your place and leave a link below. WFMW guidelines can be found here.

And I should qualify that by telling you that we never buy new cars. At the mere mention of a new car, my adorably frugal Hubs starts twitching and mumbling something about "depreciates the moment you drive off the lot..." etc.

But, we had done our research and had our sights set on a Honda. Since Hondas evidently (according to all the Honda groupies in my life) drive for a gazillion miles and could survive a nuclear holocaust and drive on the ocean floor, we figured it was an investment to buy new this time around.

Y'all, it's gorgeous. It really is. And it scares me.

See, we went ahead and got the version with the navigational system on board. Partly because my frugal Hubs is also generous, and partly because he's tired of sheepish phone calls at his office that begin, "Babe, I'm a little lost..."

We first tried out the nav system on the test drive, on which we had taken our four kids (before which we had threatened them within inches of their sticky little lives not to touch A THING.) Our salesman was very young, hip and single.

When he first loaded up the nav system (I was driving), he wanted to show me the voice recognition system. He shot a dubious glance at the restless natives in the back seat. "Uh, it has to be quiet in the car for it to work."

We quieted them down, and our salesman said, "find the nearest Mexican restaurant." Suddenly little flags popped up all over the screen, marking the spots. The peanut gallery in the back erupted.

"COOOOOOL!"

"THAT IS SO WICKED!"

And the boys, thinking that we were about to purchase a car with a magical genie living in the dashboard, began shouting requests:

"GIVE US A VIDEO GAME!"

"WE WANT A PIZZA!"

Really, it was such a proud parenting moment.

The salesman went on to explain that we can follow the directions given, or go our own route. The nav system will realize what we're doing and re-configure directions.

Did you see that last sentence?

MY CAR WILL REALIZE WHAT WE'RE DOING. No car should be realizing anything. Now do you see why I'm nervous? It's like having Big Brother (or Big Sister, since our voice chick is female) sitting in my car with me. What will she "realize" next?

"Mrs. Dryer, I think you were a little hard on Joseph just now."

"Mrs. Dryer, I think Taco Bueno is a poor choice for someone on a low-carb diet."

So many people asked where my Lost post was this week, I thought I'd go ahead and throw one together. The main reason I didn't do one this week wasn't the bloggy break, it was...well, there wasn't much to say after this particular episode. I thought it was disappointing, in terms of moving forward in the plot. Here are some random observations; y'all jump in with some better ones.

John Locke becomes more duplicitous every episode. I want so much to like him, and yet the burden he placed on Sawyer this episode was just horrible. Locke has lost my trust. (And yes, I realize that's a very stupid thing to say about a CHARACTER IN A TV SHOW.)

Surely y'all caught all the Biblical imagery in this one. Locke "carrying his cross" by having his Dad on his back (Chilihead pointed that one out to me); being a "slave" to your transgressions (Sawyer committing murder in the slave ship!); even the old slave chains were used as the weapon...the list goes on. Redemption, redemption...I've said it a million times, but I'll say it again: this show is all about redemption.

I'm just sure that Kate is pregnant. And I also predict that Sawyer, who has now gone back to his bad-boy roots by killing a man, will probably not exactly be a Cliff Huxtable kind of dad.

I'm dying to know what secret Juliet and Jack are keeping from Kate (remember when Juliet said, "I think we should tell her"?). What could it be?

And why, oh why, did Kate tell Jack about the phone and the parachute rescuer RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF JULIET? Really, sometimes I think these people will never learn.

Last thing--I just read a rumor about the next three characters to die. If it's true (I don't know anything about this person's sources), two of the three are very, very shocking. Click here if you want to see, but it's a big-time spoiler.

First, there's the issue of this snazzy new design. The brilliantly artistic Jules of Everyday Design drummed it up for me, and I could just eat it up. No, really--I mean I could actually EAT IT UP. I've been looking at it for the last two days wondering what those little aqua dots would taste like. If you've been thinking of upgrading to a new design, Jules is your girl.

Additionally, I spent some much-needed time away with some girlfriends and laughed until my sides hurt. I chatted on the phone with some dear bloggy friends who have battled blog-slump themselves. And oh-for-the-love-of-all-that-is-crunchy-and-tastes-like-heaven, I introduced healthy carbs back into my South Beach diet.

Hello, my name is Shannon, and I am human again.

(For those of you who have asked, I'll post an update on how the diet is going in a few days.)

Mostly, I remembered that a mommy blogger is, first and foremost, a mommy. It's an easy thing to forget under the pressure of self-imposed deadlines, I've learned. I spent some sweet times with my kiddos laughing, mending a few hurts, and playing My Little Pony until my eyes crossed.

At least half of you are probably gasping in horror right now--I can hear you wailing from every corner in Blog Land. Just bear with me. I used to scrapbook--in fact, I loved it. Scrappers can be a little, shall we say, militant in their passion. I was a Scrapbook Evangelist--I thought everyone should be doing it, and I told them so. But then a funny thing happened:

My third child.

The third child, for me, was the deal-breaker in which things such as personal hygiene and hobbies involving adhesives became a thing of the past. I gradually fell farther and farther behind in my scrapbooking, even with my pages becoming simpler and simpler.

I had photos stuffed in every nook and cranny in my house. I was forgetting which child was in which pictures (Dryer babies all look alike). The months whizzed by, the pictures accumulated, and the scrapbooking supplies moved deeper into the recesses of the closet. The turning point came a year ago, when I realized I was purposely taking fewer pictures so that I wouldn't add to my growing stash of pictures.

What?!

After some deep breathing, I realized that if I turned in my photo cropper, I would still be a good mom. If my children's photos were not decorated with fourteen thousand dealy-whoopers and doo-dads, the very hounds of hell would NOT drag me away.

And so I purged. I gave it all away, and I bought these little jobbies instead:

They're photo-safe (of course...I'm not that reckless!) photo albums for 9.99 at Wal Mart, and the photos slip right in the side. There is a place to write (In a regular pen! Oh, the freedom!) a memo about the date, the event, which child it is, etc. Regular photo albums. I emerged from my scrapbook bunker amazed to see they even made these anymore.

And I LOVE it. The pressure is off. I was able to catch up on every single photo in my house by devoting a couple of days to the task (working off and on, mostly off). Best of all, I know that my photos are all in one place, and labeled. My kids LOVE to sit down and flip through the photos, and you know what? They don't miss the fancy stuff at all.

So, my dear scrapbookers, please know that I LOVE to look at your work. I think it's a fantastic hobby, and I may even rejoin your ranks someday when the kids are older. But for now, my photos are safe. My memories are documented. And my kitchen floor is free from zillions of little hole-punched stars and clovers.

I'm a lover of all things birthday-related. I love making fusses over the birthdays of my friends and family (and I love it when they make a fuss over mine, and yes indeedy that was a hint...) Do you have any pointers for making birthdays special? Time savers? Money savers? Please share it with Bloggityville!

I shared my biggest birthday tip a couple of weeks ago. Additionally, to help me remember my friends' and families' birthdays, I do this: when I write someone's birthday on my calendar I ALSO write a reminder one week before, writing "So-and-so's birthday next week". This prompts me to get a card and/or gift and get it in the mail in time.

It's just a litte thing, but I've learned over the years that there's nothing like have your birthday remembered to make you feel loved.

Have a birthday tip you'd like to share? Please, add your link below. (WFMW guidelines can be found here.)